Creativity and work
Yesterday we homeschoolers headed out to a Wexner Center school program for the Frog Bride. Afterwards the performers had a Q&A session and the kids asked lots of great questions (Noah wondered why there was only one actor in the show). Me, I wanted to know how in the hell those guys make a living and if it’s a real living or one where they still need to borrow money from their parents.
When I did that talk at the GCAC, I told the artists that they need to become their own patrons. The way I see it, people who get to live purely creative lives are few and far between and PARENTS (particularly mothers) who get to live them are even fewer. But many of us can live partially creative lives if we play our cards right. I mean, I’d rather sit around all day and think deep thoughts and write those deep thoughts down then stare at my page and sigh and go daydream for awhile and then come back and edit before I go back to staring into the middle distance. Unfortunately I have to make a living and I also have to wipe tushies, buy groceries, yell at people who leave their soccer shoes in the middle of the kitchen floor, discuss the merits of High School Musical II vs. High School Musical I and otherwise live my life outside of my head most of the time.
I have been itching lately to write but life has conspired against me. Having lots of work is a blessing even if it’s a creative curse and in this economy I’m grateful for my over-scheduled calendar even if it means I’m feeling a little run ragged. So it goes.
I’ll admit that I was feeling jealous of that guy hopping around the stage like a Frog Bride and jealous of the musicians accompanying him but I was also feeling inspired.
What I told the GCAC crowd is that creatives are good at finding creative solutions, right? We can find inspiration in odd places (like catalog copy or writing up a brochure) and we can also build skills when we stretch our corporate muscles. Plus we’re driven enough that we manage to squeeze the good stuff in around the mundane details of actual in real life living.
At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m cursing my calendar but blessing my billing. There’s time for everything if I’m willing to work in fits and starts. (And neglect the children some — they don’t mind. It means more television for them!)
But this freelancing I’ve been doing, I’ve learned a lot that’s benefitted my creative career not the least is to find opportunity and (important part) be willing to reach out and grab it. I’ve also learned a lot about marketing, a lot about networking and reminded myself of how much I enjoy public speaking and direct service with clients. To grow myself professionally I’ve had to stretch myself personally and since a creative career is a career (meaning I’ve never wanted to be Emily Dickinson) what I’m getting out of this less creative one has so far served me well in other ways.
Anyway. This is a buck myself up post because I’m itching to write this one essay and just haven’t had the time AT ALL and am looking at more work coming down the pike.
Dawn,
This was a good post for me to read today. So thanks!
I’m trying so hard to write in fits and starts and wipe tushies and coach soccer and . . . gaaaack. The hardest part for me right now is recognizing that getting the writing I want to get done done is only *one* part of the family goal we’ve set — financial stability, tushies wiped and children encouraged are pieces, too, of the dream package. But it’s hard to look at the whole package when I just want time, time, time in my head.
Normally in this mood I would passive-aggressively email dh “A Room of One’s Own” for the umpteenth time. But I will be creative instead.
I hear this! I have an essay looming too, but dang if this transitioning into preschool isn’t putting me through the mommy ringer, even though it’s mostly great.
If it’s any consolation, I think that fine artists have to do a lot of the same stuff that we do to justify their existence and make money - lots of grant-writing and proposal writing and constantly reworked personal statements and biographies and forking out cash for slides and tapes and web sites that may or may not pay off. They have to do more commercial versions of their work or teach or speak to corporate groups about inspiration.
A few artists I’ve interviewed have a whole team of people that do this stuff for them, leaving them to be eccentric and creative, but mostly they are older when they reach that stage (or holdouts from the bygone era of patronage), and few and far between. Good God, though, some of them are driven in a way I cannot imagine.
I think about this and struggle with it all the time. All. The. Time.